SUBSISTENCE

Dinner from the Sea

~164,000 years ago

Palaeolithic · Middle Stone Age · Saalian glacial

In a sea cave at Pinnacle Point, on the southern tip of Africa, people were eating shellfish by about 164,000 years ago, the oldest known use of food from the sea. The world was then deep in a glacial stage, much of Africa cooler and drier, and the cave's layers also hold worked pigment and small bladelet tools. Fires burned there through the same long span, leaving burnt hearth material through the deposits.

Why it matters

The coast may have been a refuge. When the interior dried out, the meeting of the rich Cape flora and a cold, productive ocean offered two food supplies that never failed at once: starchy plants and shellfish beds. Some researchers argue this southern shoreline carried our species through its harshest bottleneck; at minimum, it shows people systematically adding a new world, the sea, to their menu.

Dating & uncertainty

The date is 164,000 +/- 12,000 years, from optically stimulated luminescence on the cave sediments. It marks the oldest evidence found so far, not the first meal: shellfish gathering may well be older, and the coastlines where it would have happened are mostly under the sea today.

Sources

1. Marean et al. (2007), Nature · Early human use of marine resources and pigment in South Africa during the Middle Pleistocenedoi:10.1038/nature06204
2. Marean (2010), Journal of Human Evolution · Pinnacle Point Cave 13B (Western Cape Province, South Africa) in context: the Cape Floral kingdom, shellfish, and modern human originsdoi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.07.011
3. Herries & Fisher (2010), Journal of Human Evolution · Multidimensional GIS modeling of magnetic mineralogy as a proxy for fire use and spatial patterning: evidence from the Middle Stone Age bearing sea cave of Pinnacle Point 13Bdoi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.07.012

Our species’ history as one day

11:30:1712 h 30 min before midnight

if the 315,000 years of Homo sapiens were compressed into a single day